174 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



exhibited some stems of juniper from Godalming which bore 

 swellings, some of very large size, which were supposed to 

 be caused by insects. 



Niobe and Adippe. — Mr. Butler mentioned that whilst 

 looking through the volumes of Freyer's Beitrage he had 

 stumbled upon three plates illustrating the metamorphoses 

 of Argynnis Niobe and Adippe, and upon referring to the 

 text he found some interesting remarks on the possible 

 identity of the two forms. He then read a translation of a 

 passage (Neuere Beitrage, vol. iii. p. 11), from which it 

 appeared that, though at one time firm in the belief that the 

 two were distinct species, Freyer's confidence in the correct- 

 ness of that view was very much shaken when he succeeded 

 in rearing both from the caterpillar. In vol. iv,, however, 

 Freyer added that his later investigations left him still in 

 doubt, though he adduced additional evidence in favour of 

 their identity. The distinctions which he relied on in the 

 perfect insects did not hold good in examples in Mr. 

 Butler's collection ; the figures of the larvae show a very 

 close resemblance, the differences being less conspicuous 

 than from Freyer's description would be expected, and even 

 those differences, according to Freyer, are not constant. 

 Mr. Butler concluded as follows : — " If then the larvae and 

 the imagines vary inter se, and the pupae are alike, why are 

 we to consider the two species distinct ? Is it because there 

 is a something about the two insects that at once tells us 

 which form we have before us, even though we cannot 

 describe it ? I do not admit that this is always the case, 

 but if it were, it is no more than one sees in acknowledged 

 varieties of Vanessa C-album and fifty other species." 



Death of Mr. T. H. Allis. — Thomas Henry Allis, for some 

 years an assiduous collector of British Lepidoptera, died at 

 York on the 1st of August, 1870, aged fifty-three years, and 

 was buried in the Friends' burial-ground, Heslington Road, 

 York : he was the only son of Thomas Allis, F.L.S., the 

 eminent naturalist and osteologist, who still survives. The 

 collection of Lepidoptera commenced by the father and con- 

 tinued by the son is likely to remain entire. — E, N. 



